—SENDING YOU LOVE, AND THEN SOME

 

Kraken

 

I wet the bed on my honeymoon. Laid there in the dank dark, steel-stiff. The stain beneath me spreading like a wet forest fire. A raging drench climbing up my spine, down my shriveled testicles. Sour fish or Gila monsters jumping off my shoulders. The splash enormous. Wicked water, wicked waste everywhere. I stuffed pillows in my mouth to keep from screaming. I jammed fingers and thumbs. The taste was like an empty kerosene can. I puked up blood and guts, more foul foam to swim in. A kraken pulled me under the urine waves. Its tentacles like outlandishly long fingers, with suction cups that ripped off patches of my skin. Its mouth was a tarpit French-kissing me. Its lips tasted briny, like ripe piss and excrement. I held my breath for several years, while the bones of ancient pirates scraped my soles. I held my breath until the woman I lay beside rolled over and shook me dead. But I couldn’t die. I’d become eternal liquid, a jelly fish boy, shivering like the ghost of someone younger who once looked like me. The stained bed sheets waved on the clothesline where mother would hang them so the kids riding the school bus could relish my shame, then kill me each afternoon, right there on the playground, where all the best murders took place.